Oregon Secretary of State Dennis Richardson has a lot of weight on his shoulders.

When he was elected in November 2016, he was the first Republican to break the Democratic stronghold on statewide office since 2002.

Ending an 18-year drought was no small accomplishment for Richardson, his campaign staff and consulting companies including Rep. Julie Parrish's. His win instantly gave hope to other GOP members that the blue wave tide in Oregon might be ebbing.

Richardson has made it clear he's watching out for Oregonians, which is his job. While many of the audits he's released were ordered before he assumed office, he's been preaching about accountability.

Oregonians of both parties elected Richardson on his campaign promises to bring transparency to our elections and to be an aggressive auditor.

They expect the same accountability from the office which demands it of other state agencies.

So we're puzzled why he's now shirking from that responsibility, dismissing questions from "critics" about his 2014 gubernatorial campaign's hiring of the Cambridge Analytica consulting firm as politically motivated and "outrageous."

Richardson's office issued a press release late last Friday afternoon saying Cambridge Analytica consultants "were given a chance to do a single survey, and my recollection is that our campaign was unimpressed. We paid the $5,000 invoice and never used them again. End of story."

Lip service is nice, but where's the evidence this is all it was?

Why isn't Richardson showing Oregonians what his business was with Cambridge Analytica during his unsuccessful campaign against then-incumbent John Kitzhaber?

We want to see the canceled check for $5,000. We want to see the survey results.

If it wasn't nefarious, why not satisfy curious minds and put the information out there for all to see. That would be the end of the story.

It might seem inconsequential to Richardson, but it's not to many in the state. Stop calling it politically motivated.

If the company was just beginning its work in the American elections campaign industry, why use it? What was a foreign company offering that American companies couldn't?

Just put the information out there and let Oregonians decide for themselves.

Oregonians have a right to know what involvement Richardson and his campaign had with the British political firm we are now learning likely meddled two years later in the 2016 presidential election by using Facebook data to influence voters.

Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg is testifying before Congress in Washington, D.C., this week about how his company allowed the personal privacy of an estimated 87 million users to be invaded by Cambridge Analytica.

He will be grilled by Congress. Richardson, on the other hand, is just being asked for a few details.